Snapshot

Tati Itat won second place in the People category of the National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year contest for this shot of Leïda and Laelle, twin sisters and aspiring models who immigrated from Haiti to Estrela, Brazil. See more photos from the contest.

Who We’re Talking To … at the Aspen Ideas Festival

Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, explains what she learned about the dynamics of women’s friendships by reconnecting with the grade-school friend who abruptly cut her off more than 50 years ago.

Evening Read

These canvases were made by a young man, barely out of his teens, who never lost a teenager’s contempt for respectability. Trying to assert art-historical importance on the paintings’ behalf, a critic comes up against their obvious lack of self-importance. Next to their louche irreverence, the language surrounding them has felt clumsy and overwrought from the beginning. What little we know for sure about Basquiat can be said simply: An extraordinary painterly sensitivity expressed itself in the person of a young black male, the locus of terror and misgiving in a racist society. That, and rich people love to collect his work. We have had a hard time making these two go together easily. But so did he …

The irony of his work’s ever-rising prices is that, far from clarifying his stature, they keep alive the question he repeatedly asked himself: Am I an artist, an art star, or just another celebrity?

The distance between the two nations may be less than three miles, but North and South Korean societies are decades apart. For Northern defectors, negotiating Seoul’s subway system and living in the South can be a jarring leap into the modern world.

“Not everyone is looking for a single-family house anymore. It’s the duty of a city to look to the future.” A century ago, Henry Ford saw this corner of St. Paul as a good place to build cars. Now it’s slated to become a green neighborhood that won’t need them.

While it’s helpful to read articles about trans issues in mainstream publications, this piece plays on our worst fears. I acknowledge those fears. I experienced them myself: What if it’s a phase? What if something else is really wrong, and this is not the solution? Damn that internet! But dwelling on fears doesn’t help our children.

When my child first came out, I couldn’t find anything to read that wasn’t either clinical or geared toward young people. I craved the voices of concerned, supportive parents who wanted to do the right thing but weren’t sure what that meant. So my husband and I stuck with the values that have guided us as parents for 20 years: Listen. Take a breath, then listen again. Try hard not to judge in the moment.